Corporeal
by Follow-The-Firefly
Summary: In which Master Chief has an interesting idea for Cortana for Valentine's Day. MC/Cortana Rated T for Teen. ONESHOT


**Disclaimer: If I owned Halo, I'd make 3, ODST and REACH for PC. I want to play them, dammit!**

**Hey! Zephyr here! This is my first attempt at actually writing a Halo oneshot. This idea is by my roomie, who has never played any of the Halo games, but hears me ranting about them all the time. This was, however, written by me. I hope it's not too bad. My mind was going in about ninety different directions when I was writing this, so I can't exactly promise that it'll be coherant. XD Without further ado, on with the deadly tale!  
**

"Good to see you, Master Chief."

John removed his helmet and walked over to Dr Halsey, who was typing away on a keyboard, her eyes on the computer in front of her.

"Any progress on the project, ma'am?" Master Chief asked.

"I'm having some slight problems with encoding the data." Dr Halsey replied, brushing her greying hair from her eyes.

"Anything you can work around?" Master Chief asked.

"Hopefully yes." Dr Halsey nodded.

"Will you inform me when the process is complete?" John asked.

"Of course." Dr Halsey replied. "I know how much this project means to you."

"Thank you for working on it, Dr Halsey." Master Chief nodded. "I know you're very busy."

"It's not a problem." Dr Halsey said. "I'm very interested to see what the outcome will be. By the way," she said in the voice that one uses when they are attempting to change the subject. "Don't you have that meeting with Captain Keyes?"

"I was just on my way, ma'am." John replied.

"Best get to it, Master Chief." Dr Halsey said. "You don't exactly want to keep him waiting."

* * *

A few hours later, John was walking back to his quarters after the meeting had concluded. It was a very important meeting, but John felt that it lasted far too long.

Cortana had discovered some new conversations on the Covenant radio waves, some of which were about an invasion on the UNSC headquarters. After she had relayed this information to Captain Keyes, the commander of Pillar of Autumn had called for an emergency meeting, which required Master Chief's presence. Sargent Johnson was eager to destroy the Covenant as soon as possible, but Captain Keyes pointed out that secrecy was the best option given the current situation. John would need to find a way to prevent the Covenant from deploying and attacking the UNSC headquarters.

However, Cortana was still piecing together some of the information and determining what kinds of equipment that the Covenant had planned for the mission. It was going to take a little time.

Master Chief stepped inside his room and, after moving Cortana to the holotank, removed his helmet and the rest of the MJOLNR armour. It had been a while since he was able to move around without it, and it was a nice change.

"I still think that Sargent Johnson is trigger happy."

John looked over to the holotank and saw Cortana, her arms crossed in front of her chest, her face looking pensive.

"Sargent Johnson just wants to make sure that the Covenant don't get anywhere near Earth." Master Chief answered, running his fingers through his hair.

"But he shouldn't be jumping at every chance to destroy the Covenant without gathering the proper intel." Cortana said. "That's just careless and crazy."

"Like we haven't done anything careless and crazy?" John raised an eyebrow.

"Hey, you know I like crazy." Cortana smiled.

* * *

Dr Halsey reached for a cup of coffee with one hand while her other hand typed away at a computer keyboard. After many years of working in the lab, she'd perfected the act of typing with one hand.

As she worked, Dr Halsey wondered why Master Chief had asked for such a product to be made. She understood why most people would need it, but she had never thought that John would have had that kind of relationship with his AI. In fact, some of the Marines who had been assigned AIs found them chatty, annoying and even distracting in missions. While she knew that Cortana had specifically chosen to work with Master Chief, Dr Halsey had to wonder if there was something going on between John and Cortana.

After a few more minutes, Dr Halsey realized that she had finished. She pressed a button on the phone near her computer and called Master Chief.

"Master Chief, your project is finished."

"Should I bring Cortana with me, ma'am?" John asked over the intercom.

"Since she's involved in this, I'd say so." Dr Halsey replied.

"I will be there momentarily." Master Chief said before severing the connection.

"Chief, what are we doing?"

Cortana was confused as to why she was going to Dr Halsey's lab with Master Chief. She had noticed that he'd been acting very strangely in the past week and she had attempted to find out why by asking him various questions. However, her attempts provided no results. John wouldn't say anything, which might not seem out of the ordinary to anyone else. Cortana, however, knew Master Chief well and this was very strange for him.

"We are going to Dr Halsey's lab, obviously." John responded.

"But why?" Cortana asked. "You have no reason to be seeing Dr Halsey. Unless…"

"Unless what, Cortana?" John asked when the AI didn't respond.

"Unless you're in a relationship with Dr Halsey." Cortana said.

"That's ridiculous, Cortana." John shook his head. "There's no way that would ever happen. Besides, I don't even think about her that way."

"That's a relief." Cortana said with a sigh.

"And why's that a relief?" Master Chief asked.

"Oh, no reason." Cortana said.

"Oh really?" John raised an eyebrow.

"Yes." Cortana answered.

When they reached the lab a few seconds later, Master Chief and Cortana found a body on the table. If John hadn't known better, he would have thought that the body was real, not the robotic body that he asked Dr Halsey to create.

"It's all finished, Chief." Dr Halsey said, nodding towards the body.

John examined the body on the lab table. It looked very similar to Dr Halsey, albeit a younger Dr Halsey. It took Master Chief a moment to notice that it looked like Cortana, though the "skin" was white instead of blue.

"Ready to give it a shot?" Dr Halsey asked.

"Yes, ma'am." Master Chief nodded before asking his AI, "Ready, Cortana?"

"Ready for what?" Cortana asked as John yanked the chip from the base of his neck.

He placed the AI chip into the slot on the base of the neck of the robotic body. After a few seconds, the eyes opened and it sat up on the table.

"Am I in an actual body, Chief?" Cortana asked.

"Yes, you are." Dr Halsey said. "It seems that this was a success. I have to say, Master Chief, this was certainly an interesting experiment."

"Maybe the military will be able to have some use for it after all, ma'am." John said.

"I'm afraid I don't understand." Cortana was clearly confused about what was going on.

"Master Chief felt that it would be easier to interact with you on certain occasions if you were in a corporeal body." Dr Halsey explained.

"What sort of occasions?" Cortana turned to face Master Chief.

"Just normal day to day occasions." John replied. "I would like to interact with you as a human as well as an AI, Cortana."

"I see." Cortana nodded. "Thank you, Dr Halsey, for allowing me to become corporeal, even if I'm meant to go back to being seen via holotanks."

"Master Chief, you might want to go talk to Captain Keyes about that mission. He says he has new information for you." Dr Halsey said. "Cortana, you'd best go with him."

"In the Chief's head?" Cortana asked, to which she received a glare from John.

"No, you may use your new body." Dr Halsey replied. "You do want to use it, don't you?"

Cortana's eyes moved from Dr Halsey to John as she said, "Yes. Yes, I do."

**I tried to write MC/Cortana, but it didn't turn out well. MC didn't want to cooperate with me, so I just gave up. I hope this wasn't too bad. Reviews equal love. Thanks for reading!**


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